The OFFICIAL Unofficial Achewood Message Board
Trivial Pursuits => Wild Card => Topic started by: side_show on February 19, 2010, 05:28:29 pm
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The Road Not Taken - Robert Frost (1874–1963)
TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
So what road are you on? Have you taken one path, then switched to another? Or are you pulled along by fate, or serving someone else's needs these days?
I ask because I'm at the crossroads in my own life and I'm eyeing up the well-trodden path after years on the road less travelled. It might just be the tick, tick, tick of the biological clock I thought did not exist until it started rattling inside me. I've been the one who tried anything, and who did the crazy things, took the risks and grasped glory and defeat. Maybe I'm getting old, maybe I'm getting tired, maybe I just need a short break, but suddenly a house, a family in suburbia and all the things I never wanted are starting to look surprisingly attractive. Yet at the same time, travel around the world, artistic exploration and adventure as a whole are incredibly attractive.
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I think I've been kind of stumbling slipshod in the dark from one to the other, if we'll go with that metaphor.
Not many people from rural Upstate New York move to a large city, let alone a west coast city, and make it stick.
However I am also slowly burning myself out at a mildly-humiliating low-skill-labour dayjob because it is what allows me to most help my brother with the disabilities associated with his seizure disorder and the pills he needs to keep it in check. So that probably goes in the other column.
I have probably taken a few more Big Swings than most people, really, but when I have swung and missed, it has taken me much longer to recover than most people who take those Big Swings. If that makes any sense.
Some people can't try at all, go strictly on momentum and count down their life like a game clock.
Some people can just fail, dust themselves off and try again near-immediately.
I'm neither of these types, at least not wholly. I can get on the path less taken but when I stumble there, I fall into a pathetic heap for a while before walking again.
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I'm sort of tramping around in the bushes next to the better-traveled path, occasionally squatting down to watch a bug, then getting up to sprint through the weeds. I spent my childhood bouncing between continents, had a pretty typical HS period, went to a State university because of my ..unorthodox.. learning style and took 6 1/2 years to get a Molecular Biology degree and 57 semester units of PE (majority of those in Lacrosse and Scuba). Got out, made T-shirts, suffered paralyzing panic attacks, apprenticed and bluffed my way into Actual Science work, tricked a girl into marrying me. Spent 5 years playing then made a baby, earned a couple black belts, made another baby 7 years after the first, got back into lacrosse and here we are. I earn a princely (well...an Earl-y) sum, but don't own a house or more than one car. Lots of vacations, a fat check going into retirement savings, and poor early-years money management combined with a jaundiced view of housing in the SF Bay Area keep me from shackling to a mortgage.
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I never saw the path, either one of them.
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Paul beat me to it - I was going to say "Path? What path?"
Also I was going to say, for a long time I did the conventional thing, kept going to school and then did the thing school had trained me for, but then all hell broke loose.
But I realized, that is totally a lie. Yeah, I decided in high school that I wanted to do theoretical linguistics. But (with my unerring instinct for the things that there's no market for) I also wanted to study early music. And I ended up at a college where I couldn't do either properly, and I dropped out for a while, and I went back to a different college intending to go straight on to grad school, but actually worked for a while in between... Obviously the ten years where I had the same job teaching at the university were the aberration, and no one who'd been paying attention should have expected that to last.
I have always been a jack of all no-market-for-it trades and master of none.
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I've chosen the well-traveled path, but I'm traveling it on a unicycle, playing a violin.
Which is to say: Just because you're going in the same general direction as everyone else doesn't mean you have to get there the same way.
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I've chosen the well-traveled path, but I'm traveling it on a unicycle, playing a violin.
Which is to say: Just because you're going in the same general direction as everyone else doesn't mean you have to get there the same way.
THIS
I think "two roads" thing is kind of a false dichotomy. Life has more to do with how you walk down the path you're on than which path you choose.
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Pretty much what AW said. I am quite on the well-traveled path, methinks, but I'm happy with it, so it's all good.
I am, however, more obsessed with the "Sliding Doors" notion of alternate realities, and small choices making big differences. The most obvious such choice, I think (for modern yuppie types like me, anyway) is where you went to college. If I could go it back and do it differently, I might, not because I regret anything from this go-round, but just to see how things would turn out if I'd gone to Brown, Penn, Swarthmore, fill in the blank. Would I have found a college sweetheart and gotten married sooner? Ended up in some miracle job right out of college? Fallen in with a bad crowd, done drugs, and failed out?
For the most part I expect things would have turned out similar, but one never knows.
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Going to a small, local, all-girl college was absolutely the most important decision I have ever made.
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THIS
I think "two roads" thing is kind of a false dichotomy. Life has more to do with how you walk down the path you're on than which path you choose.
I don't know about that. I honestly believe choosing to have a child will most definitly close some doors to me. I simply will not have the freedom of no financial responsibilty if I choose to have a child. I've never cared about money, comfort or stablilty, but if I have a child, I know I will love that child and want to provide him or her at least the latter two, and ideally a sufficient portion of the first. Hmmmm.... it's a head scratcher.
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having a child might create different opportunities. lts like a choose-your-own-adventure. the ones that keep thier fingers in the pages, so they can go back if they dont like the outcome, tend to get less out of the story. if you commit to X decision, a, b, k, and c arent available anymore, but there will be z, y, f, and L.
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I don't know about that. I honestly believe choosing to have a child will most definitly close some doors to me. I simply will not have the freedom of no financial responsibilty if I choose to have a child. I've never cared about money, comfort or stablilty, but if I have a child, I know I will love that child and want to provide him or her at least the latter two, and ideally a sufficient portion of the first. Hmmmm.... it's a head scratcher.
Oh absolutely. I'm not saying that your choices don't make a difference in the circumstances of your life. My point is more like whatever (within reason) the circumstances in your life do you choose to approach things in a creative, positive way. Which obviously is not even close to a problem for you.
My Dad always says "Attitude is everything" and I believe that. I think the most important decision we can make is deciding to be happy and relatively sane. Once you do that, most other stuff is transitory.
None of this is much help in making a decision, though.
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I don't know about that. I honestly believe choosing to have a child will most definitly close some doors to me. I simply will not have the freedom of no financial responsibilty if I choose to have a child. I've never cared about money, comfort or stablilty, but if I have a child, I know I will love that child and want to provide him or her at least the latter two, and ideally a sufficient portion of the first. Hmmmm.... it's a head scratcher.
The thing about having kids is that they change everything, especially what you value in life.
Any parent will tell you that having a baby means you lose freedom. What most don't tell you is that, when it comes right down to it, you don't care.
Except for those that do -- some people have babies without being prepared for the responsibility that comes with it (whether they're 14 or 41), and these people do bemoan losing their relatively carefree existence. But being ready for a child is a lot like being insane: if you're wondering whether you are, you're probably OK.
Additionally, as Jaydub will no doubt tell you, there's no reason kids should keep you from being a world traveler, especially before they reach school age. Traveling is great for kids, and think how much you'll be giving them as you expose them to new places and cultures. It adds a layer of complexity to everything, but that's true if you stay home as well.
Then again, if you do have a baby, you may stop valuing travel in favor of the world of adventure kids place at your doorstep, and that's OK too. Like I said, kids change everything -- most of all, you.
So the real question is not, "am I ready to have a baby?" Because nobody ever is. How can you be? You have no idea what it's like. The real question is: "Am I ready to become somebody else entirely, someone I may not even recognize in five years?" The baby is almost incidental -- anyone can change diapers. But the weight of having sole responsibility for another living person is so heavy that it will re-shape your very heart and soul.
If you're afraid the gigantic question mark that is the future of you+kids, hold off for a while longer. If you're excited about the prospect of growing into something completely unforeseen (and watching your spouse have a similar metamorphosis), by all means, go for it.
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Thanks for the insight JL. I definitely believe in the transformative, and I've been through more than one transformation in life so far. I'm well due to shed my skin and become a new version of me. I'm just not sure if parenthood is the transformation I want or not.
Because I grew up extremely isolated - my mom didn't allow myself, my sister or my dad to have friends, and didn't have any friends herself - I basically only had the one really disturbing front row seat on what being a mother meant. My mom hated being a mother, hated my sister and hated my dad. She made this clear to me as her one and only "allie." I took this lesson to heart, and genuinely accepted that motherhood was a terrible burdon and nothing else. Now, as I see my friends, peers and sister with their own children, I see that being a mother can be joyful. Most deeply I feared I would lose myself to motherhood, and while some of my friends have lost themselves to motherhood, both my sister and two of my closest friends are still well able to love themselves while being mothers who place high priority on their children and their famelies. Likewise, as I've become aware of my own capacity to love and my ability to love my friends' children and my nephew, the fear that I will reject my child the way my mom did with my sister is lower.
On the flip side, I spent the first 30 years of my life planning for a life without children. Then again, I also planned a life that ended at around 30 in my imagination, so everything beyond 30 is wide open now. I can be and do anything. The one thing I know for certain is that I want a family. Not children, but a family. Perhaps there is a way to have a family without being a parent though. I don't doubt it, but I'm not sure what that looks like yet, or if it's what I want. Taking the common path would comfort a lot of people in my life - people who I currently have to fight to have keep me included in their life because I haven't had a family like they have... I have a lot of thinking and choices to make.
Reality is that if I want a biological child, I have a limited window for that. Being 31 means I likely have lots of time left to live, but it means that if I want a child of my husband and I's genetic pool, the next 4 years are pivotal. I'm getting all my geese in a row career wise and life wise to have a baby in a couple years, but I'm not yet committed to actually having a child. Even the shift from never, ever wanting to be a mother, to the tiny crack of possibility is a massive shift for me. With all the shit that went down (abuse wise) that I haven't processed, the next step is to get into therapy to work all that garbage out, heal from it and then decide. I'm daunted, but I've been researching therapists and figuring out which one I want to see. It's a scary step for me. There's a lot of shit I didn't have to confront about my past if I wasn't going to be a parent, that I now have to face full on.
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...My mom hated being a mother, hated my sister and hated my dad. She made this clear to me as her one and only "allie." I took this lesson to heart, and genuinely accepted that motherhood was a terrible burdon and nothing else...There's a lot of shit I didn't have to confront about my past if I wasn't going to be a parent, that I now have to face full on.
This is a journey you've got to take on your own, but by way of reassurance, my mother had a similar relationship with her mom. (Grandma, in turn, was raised by her father because my great-grandmother ran off with another man when my grandmother was 4, taking my grandma's half-siblings but leaving grandma behind -- how's that for emotional baggage?) My mom, though she sometimes erred on the side of over-protectiveness, was (and continues to be) a loving, caring, affectionate mother who instilled in me all the qualities I most value now that I am a parent myself.
I am trying not to try to sway you in one direction or the other, here, but I am admittedly pro-baby and horribly biased, so I hope you're taking this for what it's worth (which isn't much) and with a grain of salt.
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I am majorly pro-baby, pro-cute house, pro-marriage, etc. It is maybe not very realistic the way I view these things.
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I am majorly pro-baby, pro-cute house, pro-marriage, etc. It is maybe not very realistic the way I view these things.
'the family' is the basic unit of society, so there is nothing abnormal about seeing "the house, the family-mobile, the S.O. and kids, the job, etc." as normal.
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oh, no, it isn't that I think they are normal that is weird, I just think I have a really unrealistically positive view of what these life choices will entail.
"obviously I will have an awesome job and loving, functional family and everyone will be healthy and no one will get divorced or hate each other or anything."
I dont' know. Lately the girl keeps dragging me into these weird arguments about marriage that make no sense.
1. she has her factual understanding of what "most people" do very wrong
2. looking at her family, I do not get where she is getting her weird, intensely negative impression of marriage.
3. I do not understand why I am getting antagonized about my attitude towards marriage by my girlfriend, when I am 21 years old and still in school. CHILL OUT, I WON'T TRICK YOU INTO MARRYING ME.
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A lady saying negative things about marriage is generally just code for "don't propose to me yet. I'll let you know when I'm ready to drop down on one knee." There is nothing many a lady fears more than having a really awesome guy they are involved with ask her to marry him when she isn't yet ready, because the prospects are either "break the awsome guy's heart" or "dive into something you're not even sort of, mildly ready for." Have you figured out at what point in your life you want to get engaged and then married? You might want to open the doors of communication by letter her know what sort of rough time frame your thinking of is, that way the pressure is sort of off, and she can relax and enjoy what ever point on your time line your on. Unless of course your time frame is within the next six months to a year. In that case, the honesty is important, but it would mean you have very different goals and have to reexamine things seriously.
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I mean, I do not think she thinks I am going to ask her to marry me.
Who knows. She gets weirdly agitated about it. Maybe I give off a crazy vibe.
I mean, I do, probably.
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Smells, you would be such a great mom.
I am trying not to try to sway you in one direction or the other, here, but I am admittedly pro-baby and horribly biased, so I hope you're taking this for what it's worth (which isn't much) and with a grain of salt.
Uh, this.
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what sort of rough time frame your thinking of is, that way the pressure is sort of off, and she can relax and enjoy what ever point on your time line your on. Unless of course your time frame is within the next six months to a year
This is an idea I've come across before and don't totally understand. How can you plan when you want to get married before you meet the person you want to marry? Trying to timetable True Love like something that can only lead to bad and sad places.
I feel at the moment that I haven't taken enough 'big swings' in my life, to use 'smet's wording. I'm not exactly heading down a conventional path, I've gone to uni, got a job for a couple of years and almost got married. Then I threw that all over the side to go back and do something new with my life and at this point I'm not planning on marriage or anything anytime soon and my new career should give me freedom to do a lot of cool stuff. At the same time I don't exactly do anything particularly crazy in my day to day life. We'll see how we go I guess.
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thre path of artleast eeasistance.
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aLs os tis ais all bullshit about differenat paths. Eveyrone atkes teh patha they want tod and that is the bes all and end all. Bullshit about pathe lses traveled and path well trodeni n the end yo uare doing whatevr yone else has done. The path whic suits you best.
So basically nob off wit yur 'i am doing the htings most peopel don't' crap, as we al do what we are urged to do bilogially or just mentally, no-one is different
BOOM
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GABBY JOHNSON IS RIGHT!
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thre path of artleast eeasistance.
the path of least assistance :D
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GABBY JOHNSON IS RIGHT!
Hahahaha.
the path of least assistance :D
It's the way backwards
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This is an idea I've come across before and don't totally understand. How can you plan when you want to get married before you meet the person you want to marry? Trying to timetable True Love like something that can only lead to bad and sad places.
If your in a relationship where you don't plan to marry that person, then there's the answer. "I don't plan to marry you or have children, possibly ever. Though I'm human and things change." Which is basically what I said to my husband when he started talking about marrage 6 months into our relation ship. And I was human, and things did change. I gave him the respect of being honest with him at the time, and honest with him when things do change.
I guess the obvious disparity is that for ladies, our baby making abilities are on a definite time table. If having a kid with your DNA is on your life's to do list, like it or not, there a time table involved. If a partner's goals are to one day ideally marry and have children, as in Dan's case, saying "I'm not looking to get married for X number of years, or have children until I'm X years old or have completed X goal" doesn't mean committing to doing such a thing with the current partner. This serves to lay the cards on the table, which is part of respectful, honest communication. It sets the potential shelf-life of the relationship for the other person, telling him or her they need to either be on board with the same plan or understand his or her partner's path is likely to diverge from his or her own at a certain point. This doesn't mean things are fixed or anything, but it's about communicating trajectories. If either partner isn't honest or open about such things, you could end up really unhappily in love with someone who wants something you have no desire for. I've had two close friends end loving partnerships for such reasons recently, and it's god awful to love someone dearly and want very different things out of life.
In Dan's example, he wants to have a wife and kids one day, so the important question becomes, how long would he be willing to wait for his current lady to come around to such a plan, or if she never wants to marry, would he be okay with that over the long term, short term, etc?
A lot of people are really frightened about talking openly and honestly about the "big things." I don't know why, but I do think it's why so many people end up divorced these days. I really do think telling the truth is one of the most important things to share with a partner, in all manners. It's hella hard work, and scary, but so damn worth it.
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the first of my friends from high school just got engaged. WEIRD.
or, I guess one guy I kind of knew got married, but, I haven't seen him in several years, and he was a few years older than me.
my girlfriend's response was "I'll bet you wish that was you."
WHAT?
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The joke is predicated on understanding that Dan is way more into classically 'girly' things like love and marriage than his girlfriend.
SS: I understand that bit, at least being clear with your partner about your plans, but I just don't know how one can decide they want to be in love and married before they've met the person they are in love with. It just seems backwards. I guess you're right and the baby-clock bit does play a part, and I have no problem with doing the opposite and saying 'I don't particularly want to do that before a certain age' which isn't really any more rational.
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I think what it all boils down to is either "do/don't worry, I won't be proposing to you anytime in the near future" or "do/don't worry, I will be proposing to you sometime in the near future." Basically, this is one of the few situations in modern day where the lady and man are not on equal footing, hence paranoia on the lady's part regardless of stance on the whole deal.
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I do not think I am really down with "completely surprise proposal that is not expected," anyway.
although, does that really happen that often? It seems like the kind of thing where you know it's coming, at least based on family member's stories?
with the alternate story being "oh, she got pregnant and we figured, hey, we love each other, why not?" My brother has a theory that this is why my grandparents got married, but I do not really want/care to ask and find out.
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http://www.salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/feature/2010/02/22/redefining_marriage/index.html
I am not-forwarding this so hard right now
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You should forward it, along with a "let's elope" message, and then all your problems will be over. And by "over" I mean you will be alone and thinking about all the good times you could be having.
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yeah, totally. I was thinking exactly that.